from the crossroads of America in the Hoosier State of Indiana this is get in the podcast focused on the unfolding stories and extraordinary Innovations happening right now in the Heartland I'm Matt Hunter CEO at Powder Keg and I will be one of your hosts for today's conversation I'm joined in Studio by co-host Christopher Toph day let's roll CEO at Elevate Ventures on the show today is Jake Miller CEO at the engineered Innovation group or EIG and Karen Manja president and chief strategy officer at the engineered Innovation group that has been something I personally fought for a long time trying to figure okay how do I
keep centered and how do I work from this place of openness thank you Jake Miller is the CEO engineered Innovation group an organization focused on creating Innovative human-centric B2B SAS products their company grew 0 to 30 plus employees in less than 18 months doubling Revenue year over year have worked with some impressive Brands including Powder Keg and a collaboration with Elevate Ventures and Jake Works alongside Karen Mangia who is the president and chief strategy officer at EIG she has also worked with at Big Brands like Salesforce Cisco and atnt we're going to cover a lot today including how to tap into early career Talent on
the technical side the state of emerging Technologies like artificial intelligence but also how to separate the help from the hype Jake and Karen welcome to the show thank you for having us thanks so much great to be here did you see how he brought that pre-show back that helped separate the help from the hype that was impressive I know sometimes what happens in The Green Room does not stay in the Green Room word to the wise the cameras are always rolling right that is so true Karen really helped that helped with the show intro right before the show so I I really appreciate it you've
been awesome Partners to work with and I'm excited to dive into a lot of what you're seeing right now I know you're working with a ton of different companies of all scales from startup to Big Brands and you're separating the help from the hype which is is super helpful but I'd like to actually before we dive into the technical side and all the Technologies and cool Innovative things happening Jake when you and I started working together 18 months ago it was you that's right it was just me you now have more than 30 employees you're growing right here in Indianapolis with team members all over
the place that's right and I'm just curious to know a little bit more about that journey is this at all what you thought it was going to be when you embarked on it absolutely not I thought I would be a solopreneur for a while do some fractional CTO work maybe get a couple developers and build some things out I had no clue I would actually get the opportunity to work with folks like Karen manger Logan pund and our senior executive leadership team yeah just honestly it's been a dream come true I've always wanted to build something like this the people aspect the type of Technology
we get to work on I never would have thought we'd be working on artificial intelligence projects or blockchain projects so cool and so now I set my sites a little bit higher too I'm like okay next it's Androids but we'll get to that later what was the catalyst so the year one two three years leading up to starting EIG what was the Catalyst you're like you know what I think I'm gonna go do this on my own yeah yeah I think there are a couple things there so the first is I have a big personality if you haven't noticed and one of the things shocking
and one of the things that I felt a little held back by not by anyone in particular but just generally was working at some of the companies I was I wasn't I didn't feel like I could I could be myself but I couldn't just put everything out there and maybe that sounds cheesy or corny but like the culture that I wanted to build the core values I had I think a lot of people during covid went through this process thinking about what do I really want out of life who am I at the core exactly and what matters yeah exactly what did that process look
like for you I literally took two weeks and that was my goal so I didn't do anything else obviously family things but sure during my work day I would sit down and just contemplate and reflect and I came up with the five core values that we have today a couple being maybe a little non-traditional like abundance house abundance a core value right but it's this idea that we want to work from a place of openness collaboration not from the scarcity fear mentality where we want to work from the cerebral cortex neither hypocampus and that's a real thing yeah and I think that's frankly that exercise
is a major reason why we are where we are can we dive into that real quick the what the Corpus versus the hydro campus I like your campus cities in Texas it sounds like it yeah it does Corpus Christi what are we doing here I think we found new parts of the brain yeah so talk to us about that though what does that mean to you and what did how did you start thinking about that yeah so the the fear mentality coming from the center of your brain is really the the Instinct part of the human brain it is the fight-or-flight response and many times
if folks haven't been trained and by the way this took me 40 years to figure out if you haven't trained yourself or if you have a particular Affinity to fall back into that part of your behavior you start acting from a place of fear so fight or fight or flight and you can easily lose control of a situation maybe it's how you're responding to others maybe it's the decisions that you're making and I that has been something I've personally fought for a long time trying to figure okay how do I keep centered and how do I work from this place of openness and I still
to this day probably at least five six seven times a day say okay I know I'm working from a place of scarcity right now but and I express it I say it and I say now we're going to think and flip that script to what is an abundance mentality look like and that could be things like what Partnerships do we build I don't look at other companies out there as competition that we that we're afraid of I look at that look at them as opportunities where we can work together build each other up sort of thing so what what are some of the other things
that help you get into that shift States so you mentioned saying it out loud that's the start let's just get this out in the open and say hey I'm feeling afraid right now or hey I'm feeling a little bit fight or flight right now yep but then how do you shift into that next gear are there certain things that you do and Karen please feel free to chime in here because I know we all have our own struggles with staying in the right mental state when you're working but I'm curious what kind of have helped each of you I would love to hear Karen's perspective
on this one yes I think about our value of being insatiably curious insatiable curiosity and something that really helps me and that I try to work with our team on and speak into the conversation is getting curious and asking questions so what else could this be what choices do we see right now what does doing the doable look like what could we try with five people five dollars in five minutes and that mentality of think big act small helps you open up to this abundance of possibilities because I think when we're afraid when we're feeling scared when we're feeling like we only have one great
client and we've got to do everything perfectly for them which isn't true by the way but we start to have to challenge ourselves of is that true is that absolutely true who would we be without that story how is that story keeping us stuck in a place where we're only seeing limited choices or we're only seeing one way to win so I look in the direction of that insatiable curiosity asking questions like what else could this be is that true how do we do the doable what could we do in five minutes to at least start to get unstuck a little bit and that helps
a lot with looking in that direction of abundance and when you start brainstorming if you and I did that activity we could come up with a huge list of things we could try in 100 minutes right the old butt versus and but the and versus the butt right it takes your brain to one of those two places and another one I like in that category is I wonder so if we just started saying you put out a challenge and then I said I wonder and then you wondered back and then you wondered back we'd suddenly have this huge list if we just looked in the
direction of tapping into that Curiosity yeah there are two other words I like to use along these lines and it's convergence in Divergence so when you are working from a place of fear or what we're just talking about that's convergent thinking and what we want to encourage is Divergent thinking and so that could be something like well let's just throw an idea out there that may be off the wall and that's okay then we can edit but open up the possibilities that's an incredibly powerful tool I love that I think the focus on language is really clear that there's just so much power and a
getting something out of your brain and saying it out loud but then B what kinds of questions and words are you using consciously to prompt that sort of unconscious shift yeah is give things a name and that and that's true not even for this sort of situation like even product building yeah give it a name give the the features a name give the the structure build a taxonomy because if you don't have a word for it you can't talk about it real quick for the listeners can we dive into what does EIG do there's various types of companies and Etc out there so what do
you do at EIG we work with everyone from entrepreneurs all the way through Enterprises and we really focus in on helping them take an idea get some insights about that idea and then turn it into something they can Implement and that might be a go to market pitch deck that might be a full-on B2B SAS product that might be a venture capital Dex they can go raise some more money for their idea they should be a scan of the market she did you would do an entire deck not just the screenshots the wireframes but the entire depth that's right help them think through their story
their why their Vision yes Etc yes and in fact we are working with a company right now that we're helping them think about how to monetize their business model not just is this a viable Venture Capital back business but how are we going to monetize this idea and really grow the business so we think about this life cycle of idea through insights through something you can Implement whether that to your point is a wireframe or a clickable prototype or a full go to market deck yeah we're actually working with an organization based in Arkansas they do biopsies I'll leave it at that um but they
want all these software components they they are taking digital transformation seriously so how do you take something very clinical and make it accessible accessible to patients the Physicians the clinicians the providers and when how would you build a platform to make that extensible so it's not just very internally focused it is wow they want to build an ecosystem for their suppliers their vendors very cool that's something we have helped them design help take their they had four or five different product line ideas and they were all very like Point solution based and we said you know what what if you thought about this as an
ecosystem as a platform that's extensible and then how would you monetize that some of these things you may just want to have extensions of your product or your services others you may want a white label commercialize license the data you might have ai models that sort of thing and they're not product people they've not come from that world and so you can take the startup mentality and apply it to these mid-sized to Enterprise companies and it's game changer for them that's really cool I'm you're talking about all the different types of companies that you work with and it strikes me that it could be challenging
as a company working with so many different kinds of cultures to stay true to your own culture as you're engaging with different people different companies is that something that you've ever struggled with or have had to have conversations internally about how to stay true to EIG and what it is that what and how it is that you do and why you're going after your why I have to say coming from a sales leadership background especially in big companies I'm used to there's no such thing as a bad deal money is always a good thing so you always take a customer and we are very thoughtful
about who can we serve well and who is operating in alignment with our values so we do have conversations and say even though it would be really tempting as a startup and scale up business to just take that money it's probably not the right kind of client for us so true it can bury you right yeah it can bury you winning can be a detriment yeah honestly to your growth and something I've been fortunate to do in my role is go back and have a one-on-one interview with every single Prospect we pitched and did not successfully win and every customer where we've completed a project
because we've been asking them what do you see as the value we provide and it's been interesting to hear through their lens how are they measuring success and our value and what is it that differentiates us and I'm reminded of a client Vellum here that came out of high alpha Innovation and one of the aspects that was so compelling to John Larson the founder and CEO there was how we helped him build a fantastic minimum viable product and go to market more quickly and how we helped him launched his software team so he then after we built the MVP and launched it and documented everything
he hired ahead of engineering and he specifically called out what a seamless transition it was to hand over that product to someone else and then his words could pick up the ball and run with it yeah without the engineer wanted to just rebuild it all exactly that's a real thing that's a real thing no Engineers never want to rebuild it from Instagram that we think about right launching software and software teams and that's a differentiator that's more than just your development agency sort of work yeah that's cool and actually built into the original concept of the company was the idea that we would hand it
off to the customer and so we have to do a good job of building things in a way that if you do bring an engineer in like like we've actually had a couple times where we've used a Cutting Edge technology graph database which was the right tool for the job but not everyone has that skill set it's hard to find and so we've actually stopped in some cases using those because when you bring on a Founder that may or a technical co-founder or CTO VP of engineering to their company they may not have experience with that that is very tempting for them to say oh
let's go rewrite it so we've got to be very careful about that but but the point I was going to make was I always like pointing to the tattoo on my arm of our company logo because who does that but this symbol here represents transition that's very thoughtful of how do we build their organization and our participation in a way that as we peel people off they put their people in they have just a seamless transition they've they've got a software company through and through not just a product and that's our differentiator and I'm very proud of that but what we're finding now is people
say well we actually want to keep you around now so maybe I need to change that little uh logo that'd be it needs to be a square so I can get the tattoo fixed this is what it means to be all in as a Founder all in it also means we're unlikely to Rebrand which I appreciate in the role I'm in I feel like we're committed to that logo oh there's room there's room you can always expand on it it's like Transformers you build on top of one it's a journey yeah yeah exactly which needs to be an extensive extension yeah how about cross sector
so you deal with different types of clients we do so how does cross sector and the need to go find domain experts in various sectors to make a given product come to life yeah so what's important is the value of insatiable curiosity and people that are just very good critical thinking thinkers on our our side of the house so when we're working with a customer we tell them we are not going to be domain experts you're the domain expert but what we're going to do when we work with you is pull it all out and pull it all together we're going to synthesize it for
you which by the way that's what those other exercises for people just listening it's I'm pointing to my arm again so that's important tell me a little bit about that critical thinking skills on the team is that something that you think can be trained and continue to be honed or is that something you're either born you even either have it or you don't yeah I've come to the conclusion you're either born with it or not interesting yeah wow that's a breakthrough right there I hope I have it yeah it's bold me too bad statement yeah I think so yeah tell me why I I'm I've
always one of my Achilles heel actually is potential and seeing potential people and that sounds counter-intuitive right I know Karen's laughing at me working with you every day I that's a very Salient observation that was Data I needed yeah it it's important in the hiring process to make sure you're when you're giving when you're bringing people on board and you may be putting them in a role where it's going to stretch their current skill set to evaluate can they actually make that lead and it's even more important in a services company that's 30 people because you feel the pain of any weak link so that's
why the other aspect of what you were saying about working across Industries though and balancing being a company our size 31 employees and growing is we have to have people that can play across a variety of sectors and segments with that said probably about half or a little more of our businesses in digital Healthcare yes and we do have some people that we consult with that are experts in that area and that work in healthcare that we can consult and we really prioritize thinking about what is a common denominator across all these different Industries and security is definitely top of mind so we just brought
in someone who's incredibly talented to be a devsec ops manager specifically to focus on the kind of security and compliance that we know every client whether you're in financial or health care or some other adjacent business is not only going to need but you're also going to want to go back to your stakeholders and be able to reassure them that you've made the proper Investments that you're partnering with the company that understands that has depth of expertise and that will help you if you need it pass your Audits and you know was there something that pulled you into digital Health more than others of half
your business is digital health is it a macro Trend that you think is behind that or do or what is it Geographic there's a geographic poll what was it that kind of pulled you that way I think it's we the folks we work with say you've worked in product you've worked in healthcare security and compliance that is hard to find very hard to find yeah and so that's I think why the Big Driver there's also just macroeconomics so when you look at and you guys probably know this better than I do when you look at where VC investment is going so much of it is
digital Health Tech right now I think it's part of it I don't think it's all of it because some of the companies that are in health Tech are like one's a a major Health Care system and they're looking for ways to just break out of the sort of cycle that they're in right now like how do we innovate how do we think outside the box and and not only come up with ideas a structure an organization to do that so we're going back to that concept of how to even run a product company I don't know I know whether you're talking about digital health or
you're talking about fintech or any other industry what are the top three transformational Technologies today that people need to be paying attention to oh such a good question Jake's dying to answer it so we're gonna let them yeah top three let's do a countdown Letterman style so let's start with three start with three number three and we'll work our way up till one oh man okay number three things to pay attention to everything's we can start with one yeah so but but here's the thing breaking down Ai and data science right I think that's probably the way to think about it because AI being such
a big umbrella term so the three to pay attention to and like someone say data science in general right just like you have a massive amount of information how you can get insights from that right that's not necessarily new but it still is for a lot of companies especially big ones how do you even use how do you leverage that technology so I so I just getting it structured just getting it structured what questions do I ask yeah yeah those things are those things are important the second would probably be generative AI and we're very much in Exploration mode right now and I say that
we is in the world and some of the ways that we're finding to use internally is pretty awesome they've just bubbled up in the last couple weeks frankly we are I'm feeding all of my own personal notes into a model a large language model so that at the end of the week I can start developing uh synopsis and summaries for my clients specifically from Jake so we already do weekly updates from our project managers and such on project status but there are a lot of things I do as a fractional CTO and just generally an advisor that'd be nice just to summarize in a five-point
thing right I take notes all week why am I going to sit down and write all that out again I'm just going to feed it through the model and have it help me get me 80 of the way there things like we have all this information about the projects and the tickets cut the developers are working on design we have figma files feed that through llm because guess what now I can say what is Victor working on this week and I'd go to Victor I could just get a what are we doing about feature X have there been any problems and we're seeing real value
from that I'm actually we build this stuff and I'm still dumbfounded that it works yeah right yeah like for the rally conference part of our demo is going to include a you can walk into our booth stand the front of a screen and you can interact with a digital twin human that is has knows everything about EIG the customers were allowed to share about the types of projects we do and talk and interact directly with it wow that's awesome pretty freaking cool right and and again like today we just add a bunch of data into that algorithm and I was like you guys I asked
her this question and this is what it said it's amazing so there are practical applications that's more of just hey showing off how the technology could be used but so okay that's number two emerging or generative AI number one drumroll I'm gonna have to think about it like where's my white paper it's awesome are you ready to transform your brand with award-winning video content that captures your vision and connects with your audience check out Alchemy the experts at building your brand using video from story driven social media Snippets that leave a lasting impression to compelling full-length documentaries they have got the expertise to take your
brand to the next level Alchemy is actually our video partner here on get in and they do amazing work all the videos across social across YouTube all that is done by Alchemy and they're an amazing partner to work with reach out to me Nate at Powder Keg or check out alchemyfilmco.com to get connected with Alden and his team they will take care of all of your video needs something that I appreciate about about that topic we were talking about separating help from hype yes I learned from Jake that hype actually serves a purpose right so maybe talk a little bit about what the hype cycle
is teaching us right now about all of these Technologies and how people could do something to get started with a real project the real project I'm going to use generative AI again for this right yeah and even blockchains I see the next tattoo forming another transformational technology yes yes if you'd asked me a year ago I would have said blockchain yeah okay um so dig into why you would not say that today I think exactly what Karen's talking about I think the hype Cycle's done what it's supposed to do so we're supposed to get super excited about it think about all the possibilities and then
figure out what works and doesn't all get disappointed trough of disillusionment exactly and then come back and say who actually is valuable right and blockchain we've figured out what is actually to an extent what is actually valuable and I think one of the things we see there two parts to that I think the one that's been most successful is in the customer loyalty program realm and there are a lot of companies here locally that are doing work there holder as an example this is really awesome in flaunt but so now we're normalizing I think there's loyalty programs and then the second one would just be
data collaboration between organizations and then proof of Providence so where did information come from and and actually not at the risk of rambling here I think when you start looking at Technologies combined that's where the real power starts coming in like Ai and blockchain that's right so think about and I haven't completely cracked this nut but I will I promise but think about and this is idea of like Divergent thinking right like how can I how can we think big and then edit it to make it something valuable so one of the great things about blockchain is its ability to prove the source so it
can go through system to system blockchain to blockchain someone could buy something and sell it but you always know and you can verify the chain of ownership now think about the potential risks of generative Ai and digital twin technology actually I would probably make that number one by the Way digital twin technology should we come back and talk about that okay but now think about news or misinformation and what if you could and again I haven't figured out every mechanic behind us but the concept would be what if I could use blockchain to prove the source of what someone said so there's a way for
you to verify with a public key I own that I can provide you that I actually said that so even if it comes out of a model and someone's duplicating my face and my voice cloning my voice I'm always able to go back and see proof that Jake actually said that or typed that or or whatnot right that is a great example of combining two different Technologies for added value that's a cool idea oh and I love that you're embracing abundance by sharing that idea freely and not being like I need to keep this a secret so no one else develops it you know what
I always say there are 52 flavors of ice cream everyone has their one that they like there's no reason to not talk about ice cream all this stuff comes down to execution that's exactly right yeah that's what it comes down that's exactly right which is why I'm not afraid of talking about the ideas that we come up with well and I want you to talk about digital twinning because this sounds a little bit like dystopian Blade Runner 20 20 50 kind of stuff yeah and if you saw some of the earlier prototypes he's built of our demo they are very alarming Max Headroom Max Headroom
yeah lots of class from the past that's so great so I saw a company the other day digital twin and they can take a stack of drawings I'm talking about big industrial plant like insane huge facilities and you just scan this puppy through in a few minutes and it literally digitizes the entire industrial plant the flow of liquids which direction Etc it is amazing in The Amazing minutes right minutes and it's crazy and that's what's I think when you start thinking about the time savings it's easy to forget about it oh that's cool technology but actually I'll give you an example here we were working
with so where we currently are working with someone and I suggested maybe what we need to do is have human intervention up front as part of user experience for training your model and the rebuttal was why would I do that if I just might as well do all my all the work myself but the answer is but think about it you're trained you won't have to teach it again right that's the beauty it's like the amount of it's in it's an aggregate right you have to look at it as the the full value life cycle of value but yeah so the time components impressive and
something our data science practice lead Charlene Tay said that really stuck with me about thinking about how to deploy some of these Technologies and how to train some of these Technologies to your point is think about how a human would solve this problem and think about very human questions and start there you don't have to start with this sophisticated technology and understand every aspect we're not free from thinking just because a machine can process something for us so start there building blocks building blocks and think about these by the way that's how the the chief scientist I used to work with he always used to
say okay like Legos you always used to start that way yeah break it down in toy toy metaphor for me right yeah that's great component based design yeah because then you can swap things and out you don't have as much technical debt anyway that's have a lot of opinions on that topic so so the digital twin I I understand what that's going to be at the booth at rally with EIG and I can't wait to try that out that's going to be awesome shout out to listeners make sure you're on the list for rally so you get in but that means we have to get
this episode out in the next like seven just for next year get on the list oh there you go yeah a repeat episode yeah what are some of the Practical not that's impractical because that's one less person you need to staff the booth and it'll probably be a huge draw to the booth for people to come in and engage it but tell me a little bit about some of the other ways you're thinking about and why it made your list of top three transformational Technologies yeah so the and this is where what Karen was talking about earlier about hype comes in right because what we're
doing at the booth is hype let's be frank right it's but it's designed to get people excited and see these the types of things you can do like I can detect the emotion on your facial expressions right um but so I'm gonna start with vision then we work the way back from there please so I believe in five years from now you will have digital colleagues that you work with and talk with just like we are here today I I firmly believe that's going to happen and part of the reason I firmly believe that's happens because I'm gonna make it happen so is this me
or is this my digital twin right now on your podcast I don't even know where Jake is scanning this all right now okay and to be clear listeners it is the real Karen we've got to get that blockchain a cup of coffee a little while ago I can confirm it is her robot robot oh but I see these as additive and so you may say oh that's frivolous like we'll just hire people personally think about cost savings right um and I'm not saying we're replacing people's jobs and saying it's additive for example if you have a software engineer and they're trying to fix a problem
that a customer's brought up it doesn't really matter what it is right what do they hate doing what are software Engineers say doing documenting yep so those are the sorts of things that are going to get replaced so not the people not the core parts of the jobs not the things that we that take the type of creativity that it takes or what I love is oh yeah we're documented we're documented and then you get down the road about two years not documentary documentation we also talk about the application the content creation what this could do for marketers as well and you're well versed in
that with your marketing Cloud background how do you create better content not that you're absent of thinking about it but if you want to differentiate your company your brand yourself as a thought leader hey this is the quickest fastest way to scan what's out there figure out what resonates all that SEO work gets simplified you create better content that resonates more and gets better I wrote a book on that released it like three months ago pillar-based marketing check it out yep tough day Ryan Brock true story I need to get my copy dude I would have brought you a free one if I'd known you
didn't have one signed copy uh yes I'll bring it to Rally okay we'll make it happen in fact there's a book saying that rally oh that's awesome yeah well you can stop by our booth and get a tattoo we have water tattoos at our station so you can wear it for your books I can't have a real one you can I I can hook you up Jake we'll do it for you right there you just asked the digital twin do you do tattoos yeah I want you to get a real rally face tattoo face tattoo yes not even ours no straight to the neck yes
neck tatt that would be amazing other practical examples imagine actually this this is something I use generative AI for today and I know for a fact because I pulled our company for ways that they use it without telling them ideas and three other people came back and said I use generative AI as a creative partner I was like what yeah that's crazy I do too and it's like brainstorming right so it's totally like being able to throw ideas out and it's not necessarily being creative it's then bringing different concepts out that I may not have thought about so it's helping me think of different paths
to consider so imagine humanizing that right and I think that's why digital twin is human digital twinning is so important is it's bringing humanization to technology and I think it's just gonna be an expectation it's way more fun to interact with people it's way more fun to have it's a different it's a different it's just a different type of interaction in fact what I've been telling folks is I think we're on the cusp of the new type of human commuter action interaction where we're not we'll continue to use mouse and keyboard for some time but we're and actually let me ask you guys a question
how AI driven dream coding yes used to create applications based on your subconscious a subconscious I just need narrow Link in there again there we go yeah how the question was going to ask how comfortable did you feel talking to Siri when Siri first came out awkward awkward yeah super awkward pretty awkward how do you feel now I just talk really fast right yeah and we also and this is also complicated everything like a million x like exponentially it's even more than a million x exponentially because when you start searching in terms of three sentences that's insane it's the first one two three words 20
years ago 15 years ago that's right it's crazy great Point yeah and so thinking of so I have Apple's home kit in my house for several things and I in the middle of the night I hear somebody go oh my gosh Siri turn on all the lights I don't actually do that but being able to interact with my house in that way but it's one word here and there it's keywords yeah that's changing and so how much more interesting is it to to to think about interacting with the things in your house as though it was another person right yeah it's just so much more
interesting it's my extrovert dream come true not only is every person a new friend every refrigerator and household appliance could be too this is the best day ever I love that I love it yeah no I'm imagining like a butler yeah it's the AI version of Ask Jeeves is that what you're going with exactly right someone is going to reboot the brand Ask Jeeves as like totally AI robot yeah robot why not and it'll get sued that idea is free so many ideas here someone's gonna come back and ask you for a check for something absolutely and we'll help you build it engineered Innovation how
can people prepare themselves to be uh able to accelerate their career in a world where things like generative AI digital cloning data science are more common plays and potentially taking parts of their job that they're currently doing and just automating them what are the kinds of skills that people need to be developing I think think and think what we as employers will be paying you to do is think to think ahead to think about the questions to ask better questions to be more curious the need for critical thinkers you will never be out of business if you can think ahead see around corners anticipate things
and be curious and try things I think there will always be roles for thinkers and creators and experimenters so start tuning yourself to ask better questions and start asking like so what okay we build this so what then we do this so what so what so what right the machine's only going to go as far as you program it so I think we have to think differently yeah I love that it's almost like that mentality of always working yourself out of the job even without AI or all these modern Technologies we should always be thinking about it depends what you want to do in life
right it doesn't mean you have to do that but if if you want to explore in advance do more things like just work yourself out of a job because if you've done that you've probably moved somewhere else that might be more exciting that's right yeah authors and Karen as an author of four books so I'm curious soon to be five yeah wow are you using generative AI to do that using generative AI to do that I do think about though how I how I would write a book proposal differently knowing what I know now and using these Technologies because it would be so much faster
to do a market scan of books that exist and the experts that exist and think about how to differentiate myself sure whereas today you go into Amazon and you think I have a cool title does that exist I'll look on Amazon and then oh here's my chapter outline did somebody else write all these already it would speed up the creative process and for me as a thought leader I think make it quicker to differentiate how is my point of view something different or additive or a new take on this yeah that's awesome that's a great point and the reason I brought up books was to
the the point of thinking that being all in is a lot of authors will say I don't hold back like when I'm writing a book I'm not like saying oh I'm Gonna Save that idea for this day and maybe ends up being that way but it is all in why because they're always going to be new ideas yeah and that is something I've held within me for a long time which is why I'm Not Afraid about talking about ideas or how you're doing one comes down to execution but two it's like ideas are a dime a dozen are going to be 20 more tomorrow I
guarantee it how about a story of a customer that you're working with that is a pick a number not a startup right there maybe three five ten maybe 20 million that is holy I've got to disrupt myself and I don't know how to do that what do you say to that leadership team that CEO what how do they get started start by looking around at either something that's not working or my other favorite is start tuning into what your current customers contact you about through customer service or your customer service chat or if you're in a retention model business why they don't renew look for
what they are telling you that you aren't asking about these are the challenges that you have the opportunities to go solve because you can get more revenue and find some of your best ideas from your current customers because they tell you all the time but what if my yes what if my team I don't they don't I don't have the bandwidth I don't have my team loves the languages that they're using the platform they're using and they don't want to change and I'd have to rewrite the whole product or the whole piece of a product that would take me two years or all the the
but right like what could I do to start moving forward with can I use the same people do I have to set up a totally separate Department Gunk work department that's only using modern technology like what do I do what I like about what you're saying is you're looking in the direction of if I have an established Revenue stream and an established base what I start to get nervous about as the senior leadership team is how to not disrupt and lose the customers I have while I go steal market share from the competition or figure out how to expand the addressable Market opportunity or share
of wallet I can get from a current client and one of the most powerful Concepts in that idea of innovation particularly if you have an existing business and you think you know your clients and their Journey fairly well is to Outsource some of that Innovation to an innovation partner Harvard Business Review did a great study about this topic about the ability to move faster in your Innovation cycle when you Outsource to an innovation partner even in that short concept of we have a starting list of ideas we want you go look for some ideas and then test them out in the market it's a quiet
way to do it with a third party and in fact I was just having a conversation with an entire company that's built around this concept of a bigger company comes to them and says we don't really understand emerging Technologies very well but this is the customer problem we're trying to solve and then this company goes and does and by the way we're talking about partnering with them they go and do a complete scan of what are all these Technologies what are all of your customer use cases what happens so they use a combination of their own expertise and a network of experts on both the
Technologies and go to market strategy and they go back to one of these often Fortune 500 kinds of companies and say all right here's how you do it do you want us to refer you to a build partner now who could go build it or someone that could test it for you and so I think about that being able to segment it because at the end of the day the innovator's Dilemma especially inside of a business is how much time do I spend on the business I have versus going to create the next new thing and you can move faster when you Outsource it and
you don't have the same constraints either of your existing culture and not to mention you probably don't you set aside like technical abilities and whatnot right you don't have the process in place to do it and let me tell you because we've been doing it for 18 months it's hard to put that process into place so when you work with a Innovation partner they're going to have that process hopefully built out so it takes away the cognitive overhead of how do I actually operationalize this as an execute on it to what are the things I actually need to focus on to differentiate and innovate and
disrupt if that's what you're after I think the other thing to think about too is it doesn't have to be disruptive innovation incremental Innovation is just as valuable and probably more accessible there's an old concept called The Power of one and it is it's just such an amazing concept right because all of a sudden you'll look up and that power of one was now it's 365 powers of one yep and so I love that just like it does just don't accomplish one simple step yep second simple step yep I could ask you a hundred more questions very easily but we blew through that time and
we're at the end of our show I want to save two minutes for the lightning round are you both down to do the lightning round oh we're ready oh yeah we're ready okay cool I'll go back and forth I'll let you start Jake on the first one and then Karen on the second question you can start sounds great all right and we'll go one question at a time I feel like there should be a buzzer here that's a great idea all of our best ideas come from our guests so that's true you'll see a buzz a buzzer on a future episode if you're down I'm
down all right power of collaboration outside of the amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem Jake what is Indiana known for first thing that comes to your mind no wrong answers I'm not allowed to say corn that's what came to your mind your mind are allowed to say corn Carol was the first thing that came to your mind pork tenderloin sandwiches and let's say agriculture yes probably uh nice save nice agriculture uh Karen what is a Hidden Gem in Indiana a Hidden Gem in Indiana is the space underneath of the city market catacombs the catacombs I've never been Jake what is a Hidden Gem in Indiana for people that
are aren't in Indiana the canal yeah the canal is awesome and I I I say that just because Green Space is important yep I had a sales force employee who was part of exact Target's big growth and sale has lived on Meridian Street their entire life recently tell my wife did you know that there's a canal right there in Broad Ripple and my wife was like what you mean the one that goes right through Broad Ripple and to Butler and through our neighborhood uh so yeah even for people in Indiana don't almost know there's a canal all right last question and Jake I'll go to
you on this one to start who is someone that we need to keep on our radar someone doing big things me great my answer I love that answer we've had a couple other guests answer with that it's very genuine I love it but I love it it's all good don't they always say vote for yourself first they're on the ballot running for something you should always vote for yourself so I I deeply appreciate you heard it here first keep an eye on Jake Miller absolutely so I would say that I would watch this guy named Wayne Patrick if you don't know him yes Wayne is
awesome in several years he is working with some very cool businesses doing very cool disruptive things and you know it's possible we're talking with some of those businesses as well but what he is doing and looking at doing to use technology to also transform communities it's amazing that'd be a person to follow so I've got a cool Wayne Patrick story I moved here sold my company I started in Bloomington to join the ore fellowship program brought me to Indianapolis started the tech community that was formerly known as Verge hackers and Founders and I was making or Fellowship salary I was making less money after college
when I was running my company in college it's awesome and I was just picking up the tab because I just sold a company and I had some money and it was like all right I'll you know pay for Beard and pizza for everybody he owned some Marco's Pizzas or maybe it was an investor in Marco's Pizza and he was just like hey man just tell me next time we'll make sure and then for years a couple years after that he just covered pizza and we're talking like 200 300 400 plus person events and it was just like he just happened to come and was like
I got pizza don't worry like here's 20 pizzas just talk about abundance mentality love that guy the first time I met him someone else introduced me to him and I sat down we had this coffee ended up lasting two and a half hours and he just said who do you want to know what do you like to do and so I'm saying is answering his question and then I say what can I do for you and he said no he said at this stage I was like to help people build networks and I'm like that's it you talk about generous right this is just another
example clearly of his character an incredibly generous person a connector truly an abundance mentality he's everybody can win we can all do this together let's do it let's see if we get Wayne on the show yep absolutely loves Marco's Pizza Karen Jake thank you so much for sharing some of your story here I know there's so much more we can do to dive deep into these topics on future episodes but thanks for sharing so much in such a short amount of time yeah thank you guys absolutely you crushed it thank you this has been get in a powder kick production in partnership with Elevate Ventures
and we want to hear from you if you have suggestions for a guest or a segment reach out to Matt or Nate on LinkedIn or on email to discover top tier tech companies outside of Silicon Valley in hubs like Indiana check out our newsletter at powderkeg.com newsletter and to apply for membership to the powder cake executive Community Check out powderkick.com premium we'll catch you next time and next week as we continue to help the world get in since you just listened to this podcast you might be thinking about starting one for your company lucky for you our partners over at casted have you covered cassid
is the first and only podcast in video marketing platform made specifically for B2B Brands I love this about them the platform makes it possible to publish Syndicate amplify and measure the value of your podcast and video content in fact we use it for our podcast here at Powder Keg and if you're a startup you should listen up because cassid for startups is definitely for you they are offering exclusive deep discounts of up to 82 percent off retail price for qualifying startups connect with casted at casted.us slash powderkeg
